Boards used in the construction of floors, walls and ceilings are composed of a wide variety of materials, and designed to be joined in wide variety of ways. Floor boards are often made of composite material including multiple layers of different materials. Floor boards are also joined to one another by a wide variety of structures and techniques, including standard tongue and groove connections and more complex and easy-to-use systems that employ adhesives and adhesive tape, snapping connections incorporated into board edges, angling board with interlocking edges, and overlapping edges. Many of the edges are specially designed to achieve objectives relating to strength, minimum visibility of the joint, prevention of ingress of water and dirt, durability, low cost of production and many others objectives.
In the case of flooring, there are two systems of vinyl floating floors that are currently available in the market. These are systems in which locking tongues and locking grooves are machined into the edges of the sheet comprising the flooring board. Problems with this system include the fact that in order to have sufficient room to form a machined vinyl locking tongue and locking groove on opposite edges of the board, the board is required to be quite thick, and vinyl itself is a relatively flexible and deformable material, not well-suited for creating a strong mechanical connection. Another system relies on adhesive strips applied to the underside of adjacent panels. However, these systems do not provide a mechanical connection between boards, they cannot be readily disassembled, and are difficult to install, because once a board is placed on the joining adhesive strip, it is difficult to re-locate.
Another flooring board having locking tongues and locking grooves machined into the edges of the sheet comprising the flooring board is described in WO 2010/087752 and shown in FIG. 16 of this application. As mentioned in WO 2010/087752 deep grooves will have a negative effect on the stability and strength of the panel edge. Problems with this system, in which a tongue and a groove must be formed on the same side edge of a board include the fact that in order to have sufficient room to form the locking tongue and the locking groove on the same edge of the board, the board is required to be quite thick, or if made thin, the tongue is not strong mechanically, especially when such boards are made from wood or fibrous material such as HDF or MDF, e.g. having a core layer or body of wood or fibrous material.
A further design is shown in FIG. 17 of this application which is taken from US 2012/317911. This document discloses a board comprising a frame, an upper material and a filler board; the upper material having an exposed upper face and an underside, the filler board being disposed within a space defined by the frame; the underside of the upper material being attached to an upper surface of the frame; the underside of the upper material being attached to an upper surface of the filler board; the frame having a plurality of latch tongues extending outwardly from the frame; the frame having at least one recess formed in its underside for engaging at least one latch tongue, the latch tongues and the at least one recess of each board being arranged to allow engagement of the tongues of a first board with the recess of a second adjacent board. The interlacing tongues between two boards provide both horizontal and vertical locking. Horizontal and vertical locking are terms well known in this art. This design requires an upper material, a frame, and a filler board, i.e. the use of multiple different materials.
US 2008/0168730 describes and shows in FIG. 9a (FIG. 18 in this application) how a herringbone pattern can be created using two boards (A, B) whereby one board is the mirror image of the other. This increases the complexity of the boards as well as the number of boards which increases inventory costs. Further to work out which boards are required to be purchased to form the pattern shown in FIG. 9a of US 2008/0168730 is not so easy.